Hip to the mash-up scene
Mashups are certainly nothing new to the world, nor to the blogging community or internet at large. I guess I’m a bit behind the curve then, at least when it comes to actually listening to said mashups. For the most part, they can be downloaded for free from the artist’s own website, which is nice to be doing legally. A few have really caught my ear over the past few weeks, and are worth sharing.
dj BC is a, well, a DJ who has done a lot of mashing up, and seems to be fairly respected in the community. At least, BoingBoing seems to like him, and that’s generally a good sign. I’ve had two of his songs in particular repeating on my playlist for a while. The first is They Might Be Starting (mp3), a mashup of “Don’t Let’s Start” by They Might Be Giants, “Party Starter” by Will Smith and “Get The Party Started” by Pink. It might not sound like much, but it really does work. The second is Just the Wu of Us (mp3), a mashing of a version of “Just the Two of Us” by the Rebirth Brass Band (a New Orleans-style brass ensemble, with a very snappy tuba) and some rap song from someone of Wu-Tang fame. The rapping on its own probably wouldn’t impress me, but with a dirty tuba riff, some great syncopated rhythms, and occasional trumpet blasts going on in the background, it becomes very listenable. In fact, this second song is one of many from a whole mashed-up album called Wu Orleans. The whole lot of songs are one part Wu-Tang Clan, one part New Orleans-inspired music. “Just the Wu of Us” is by far the best on the album, in my opinion, but When the Meth Comes Marching In (Louis Armstrong and Method Man, of all people) and Dirty Brass (Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Dirty Old Bastard) are also quite catchy. And in fact, the whole album is worth at least one listen through, although some tracks lack replay value.
dj BC also produced Let it Beast, a mashup of The Beastie Boys and The Beatles, which is… interesting. I think I’d appreciate them more if I were a Beastie Boys fan. Or a Beatles fan. Or both, preferably. It seems these mashup things have maximum impact when you already know both (or all, if there are more) of the songs well enough to see what the remixing artist is doing with them; how they’re making the songs talk to and with one another.
A final link-worthy mention was mentioned on Penny-Arcade last week sometime, and mixes together 50 Cent and Queen. The act is called Q-Unit (scroll down to “Looking for the Mp3 files…” for the goods) and is put together by The Silence Xperiment. Some of these are a little more PG-13 than the others I mentioned, by the very nature of the ‘fiddy songs being mixed. But Candy Bottom Girls is worth a listen for the laugh, even if you skip the rest.
October 18th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
haha I think I leave comments on here everyday! sweet little mashup thingys. That “Just the Wu of Us” song was pretty sweet hah I love how you can hear the instruments in the background while the people are singing and stuff . I made a sort of mashup-y thing… for a project, but it wasn’t that great hah It sounded like they were singing underwater haha Maybe I just won’t become a DJ :)